


Kiss and Tell

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 02:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20283880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: "So…you kissed Ash, and then…?”“And then what?! Why does there need to be an ‘and then?!’"With the whole 'Chris-and-Ash' deal, Josh knows it's always one step forward and then fifteen panicked, sprinting lunges back. This, though? This one's a little too much.





	Kiss and Tell

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from riverrunscold on tumblr! :P

“Christ _alive_—keep your pants on!” Slapping around his nightstand, Josh blearily felt around for his phone. He groaned as the frantic knocking kept up, even getting _louder_, if such a thing was humanly possible. “I—_hang on!_ Oh my God, it’s—” he paused only long enough to squint against the brilliant light of his phone’s home screen. “It’s two in the goddamn morning!” He set his phone back down, missed the table, heard it thump onto the ground.

Great!

And still the knocking continued. Only now…oh, now someone was muttering, too. Perfect. Exactly what you wanted to wake up to at ass o’clock in the morning.

He swung his legs out of bed after clicking the lamp on, eyes still achingly sensitive to the light. Shit, man, he’d only been out for what—an hour? Two? He’d only _started_ to sink into that good, good REM sleep, dreaming about…well, okay, he couldn’t actually _remember_, but he thought it might’ve had something to do with cotton candy and a ferret.

On second thought, maybe being woken up from that wasn’t the _worst_ thing that could’ve happened. 

Throwing himself onto his feet, he stumbled his way to the door, blinking hard a couple of times before peering out the peephole. The deadbolt gave way with a loud _thunk_ as he opened the door and glared, only able to get through about half of his deadpan, “I am going to _murder_ you,” before Chris pushed past him into the dorm. Josh blinked tiredly, staring out into the hall for a beat. “Yeah. Sure. Come on in. Coffee’s in the pot. Pull up a chair. Why the fuck not. Not like it’s two-_ay-em_ or anyth—” he stopped after shutting the door and turning, getting his first good look at him. “Uh…you doin’ okay over there, Cochise?”

By all accounts, Chris was _not_ doing okay over there. He paced the cramped little room, hands knotted in his hair, staring wide-eyed at the floor. After one particularly hard turn on his heel, he looked up to him, distress evident. “I did something…_really_ stupid. And I’m…_fucked_. I’m _fucked_, dude!”

“Waking me up? Yeah, yeah, I’d say that was pretty—”

“I-I-I don’t have _time_ for your…_sass!_”

Josh narrowed his eyes. “My _sass_.”

Chris groaned towards the ceiling, letting his hands fall to his sides. His hair stood up in weird, frantic patches. “I am so fucking serious, man. I, uh, I think I done fucked this one up…_wayyy_ beyond repair, _ha!_” The laugh was much too loud for the time, and uncomfortably squeaky to boot.

Hoo boy.

Josh managed to stifle a wide, leonine yawn against the back of his hand. “Okay, just…hold up. Can you chill? For a second. A _second_. I _literally_ woke up _a minute_ ago, and I’m having a little trouble figuring your shit out.”

“There isn’t _time_ to _chill_, I’m never gonna be able to chill _again, _what about that aren’t you getting?!”

He watched Chris make one more jerky circuit around the room before he finally bit. “All right…so. Do we need to hide a body, or…?”

“Again with the sass! This isn’t funny! I…” Chris forced himself to stop pacing, but the rest of his movements were still obviously tense. “I—look. If you don’t like…hug me or something _right now_, I’m gonna just fall apart. Just. Full out. On the floor. Crumble into itty, bitty pieces. Gone. In the wind. Dust. Forever.”

Josh sighed, holding open his arms for said hug. He let out a quiet “_Oof!_” when Chris fell into it, his arms like fucking vises. “Fuck me. You _do_ need to hide a body, don’t you? Goddamn it, it’s a Saturday night, the cops’ll be _expecting_ this. Ugh. Whatever, it’s gonna be okay, Cochise, we always sort of _knew_ this would be a possibility with us. Look, I know where we can get a couple of shovels. After that, we can—”

“You’re so bad at this! Why are you so _bad_ at this?!” On the best of days, Chris wasn’t exactly the _ideal_ hug recipient—boy was stiff and awkward as a motherfucker—but throwing insults into the mix? Unnecessary.

“I’m bad at _hugging?_”

“You’re bad at _comforting!_ I need to be _comforted!_”

With a drawn-out sigh, Josh patted Chris’s back twice. “There, there. I’m…I’m _here_ for you.” He raised his eyebrows when Chris pulled away just enough to fix him with a furious glare. “What? Not good enough? You want me to, I dunno,” he shrugged uncertainly, “Sing you a lullaby? I don’t know what you want from me here. You wake me up, you stomp around my room, you—well fuck, probably scare the shit out of my neighbors, if we’re getting _real_-real—you _insult my hugging technique_, you won’t even tell me what’s _wrong_, so honestly, I—”

There was a harsh jerk to one side as Chris broke away, beginning to pace again. “_I kissed Ash!_” It was more an exhalation than actual words, but oofa _doofa_, that exhale would’ve been enough to knock Josh’s socks off, had he been one of those monsters who slept with their socks on.

“…huh.” Josh’s arms sort of folded themselves across his chest as he thought. “Okay…gotta give it to you, I definitely…didn’t see _that one_ coming…” His eyes narrowed again, the corners of his mouth turning down into a contemplative frown. He wasn’t even watching Chris anymore, not _really_, so absorbed in his own sleepy surprise. “On the _mouth?_”

“Wh—I—_yes _on the _mouth_, what the _fuck?!_”

He turned to face him, eyes tracking his nervous path up and down the thin stretch of carpeting. “You are…hey, hey Chris?” Josh cocked his head to the side when Chris met his gaze, “Before you, my dude, I have never in my _life_ met someone who could turn kissing the pretty girl they liked into a fucking DEFCON 1 emergency. How does that feel?”

“_Josh!_”

“No, no, really, genuinely, it’s an accomplishment! A stupid one, but an accomplishment all the same.” In a few swift steps, he matched pace with Chris, grabbing him by the shoulders and giving him a light shake. “_This is a good thing!_”

“It’s _so_ not! Why don’t you—”

Oh no, nonono, enough of that. He clapped a hand over Chris’s mouth to keep him from launching into another panic-stricken tirade. “I’d like to take this opportunity to say hey! I’m _proud_ of you!” Grinning, he leaned forward and pantomimed a very loud, very obnoxious kiss against the back of his own hand. “Finally growing into those big-boy pants of yours! This is very exciting. Now, come on, _dish_, tell me _everything_. So…you kissed Ash, and then…?”

Chris’s glare was equal parts horror and exasperation behind the lenses of his glasses as Josh removed his hand. “And then _what?!_ Why does there need to be an ‘and then?!’ I kissed Ash, end of sentence, now she’s _never_ going to—” His voice cut out with the fleshy smack of Josh’s palm over his mouth.

“God, one of these days, we’re gonna get you to relax, Cochise. You kissed Ash, and then _she…?_” Josh wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. But…but there was something he didn’t like in Chris’s expression. Something he didn’t like _at all_. He felt his own grin falter for the first time, and he sucked his teeth with an adolescent roll of his eyes. “Ohoho…okay, okay…I’m gonna ask you a very specific question, and you’re going to give me a _very_ specific answer. How did our dear, sweet Ashley react to being kissed by Prince, uh—I mean I’d say ‘_Charming_,’ but let’s be realistic here, you’re sort of more like…Prince Blinks-During-Photos. What’d she do?” Slowly, he removed his hand again.

“I don’t _know_.”

“You don’t…know…” He clamped both hands down on Chris’s shoulders once more, leveling his gaze. “Cochise. Chris. Christopher. Bud. Bro. Dude. My darling dearest. Light of my _LIFE_. What the _fuck_ do you mean, you don’t know how she responded?”

It wasn’t exactly a _smile_ Chris gave him then. No, it was hardly a smile at all. More like a grimace. A sheepish, embarrassed grimace. “I didn’t, uh, I mean I…”

Josh watched him very, very carefully as realization began to dawn on him. He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and grit his jaw. “Let me get this straight. You kissed Ashley.”

“Uh huh…”

“And then you fucking _bailed_.”

“…uh huh…”

“And now you’re _here_.”

“…uh huh.”

When he opened his eyes, they were rolled up towards the ceiling. “You are. Unbelievable.”

“_I panicked!_”

“Yeah Chris, I can see that. I can see that you panicked. Oh my _God_, you just _left_…” There was a chime from somewhere between them, the tone loud enough in the relative silence of the dorm to almost be painful. Josh felt his eyes slide downwards toward the source of the sound, eyebrows slowly creeping upwards. “Oh gee. Wonder who could be texting you. _At this hour_.”

Silence. And then another chime as another text came through.

Josh’s eyes flicked up to Chris, whose face had gone the color of old milk. “_You_ answer her,” Chris said, teeth still bared in a rictus of mortification. “I can’t.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. Happy to!”

“Waitwaitwait! _No!I changed my mind!_”


End file.
